Friday, August 24, 2012

How Paperbacks Transformed the Way People Read

Here’s a little perspective: In 1939, gas cost 10 cents a gallon at
the pump. A movie ticket set you back 20 cents. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath,
the year’s bestselling hardcover book, was $2.75. For a nation
suffering 20 percent unemployment, books were an impossible expense.But
in just one day, Robert de Graff changed that. On June 19, 1939, the
tall, dynamic entrepreneur took out a bold, full-page ad in The New York Times: OUT TODAY—THE NEW POCKET BOOKS THAT MAY TRANSFORM NEW YORK’S READING HABITS.

The
ad was timed to coincide with the debut of his newest endeavor, an
imprint called Pocket Books. Starting with a test run of 10 titles,
which included classics as well as modern hits, de Graff planned to
unleash tote-able paperbacks on the American market. But it wasn’t just
the softcover format that was revolutionary: De Graff was pricing his
Pocket Books at a mere 25 cents.

Despite its audacity, de Graff’s
ad wasn’t brazen enough for his taste. A former publishing exec who’d
cut his teeth running imprints for Doubleday, de Graff wanted the ad to
read THE NEW POCKET BOOKS THAT WILL TRANSFORM NEW YORK’S READING
HABITS. His business partners at Simon & Schuster were less
confident and forced the edit. Even though some European publishers were
making waves with paperbacks—Penguin in England and Albatross in
Germany—New York publishers didn’t think the cheap, flimsy books would
translate to the American market.

They were wrong. It took just a
week for Pocket Books to sell out its initial 100,000 copy run. Despite
industry skepticism, paperbacks were about to transform America’s
relationship with reading forever.